Category: Music

It’s more than just the best Jane’s Addiction song, it’s also the amount of time it takes to feel decent on tour. We have played three shows, all with my neck aching from headbanging, and this morning I forgot that it ever did until someone asked how it was feeling. Okay, that probably means some vertebrae is liquifying, but what’s a few neck surgeries in my old age?

This is why I hate short, 2-3 day band trips, i.e. what Ludicra called a tour for the first six years of our existence. It’s just enough time to feel like shit and then head back to work.

3 is a special number. Christy might say, “magical,” because she believes nonsense. Who knows? 3 is the number of guitar amps we should have had at the show in Leipzig. When John’s borrowed head crapped out during line check, there wasn’t one to spare. Kudos to John, however, for having spare fuses ready to put in this boutique Marshall clone. Oh wait! This “boutique” designer decided to use a non-standard fuse. You can’t possibly argue about fuses affecting tone, so I deem this amp retarded. Superkronik superpromoter Kristoff came to the rescue and acquired us a Marshall 900 lead in 10 minutes, and we had a great show. Check one list against uncommon gear and alway pack some standard replacements like fuses for tour.

3 is also the number of amps I thought was too many to take when we finally picked up our rental amps from Nomads of Prague. This is the best gear rental place in Europe. Walking into their warehouse is depressing in that you’d rather spend a month playing with all their reams of insanely classic gear instead of tour. It’s the place to go to get exactly what you need for tour. Plus, they loaded us with a back up head for guitar and bass. I thought we didn’t need a big heavy back up to cart around. When we did soundcheck, Sir Cobbett’s 5150 sounded dreamy. Come time to play, it took a crap. So I was wrong. It happens… But not often. It’s making me think of playing around more with some of these prissy little modern solid state numbers a bit to find one that I can stomach to bring around for when my beautiful beast of a tube head invariably craps out at the worst possible time. Hmm…

The show in Prague went well enough, making some new fans and playing through the hangovers that we brought with us from Leipzig. One personal skill I never thought would be handy in the Czech Republic surprised me: knowing some Spanish. Turns out the 1 Spanish speaking Czech was at our show and he didn’t know a lick of English. I felt reasonably good about our long exchange considering I feel like an idiot when Impaled goes to Mexico. Maybe I rely on Raul too much there, but it’s just so fun to make him have to baby his gringos.

3 is also the number of times poor Sir Cadbury Cobbett has had problems on stage so far. Our show in Črnomelj, Slovenia was not so well attended, and we’d driven about 11 hours to get there. John normally changes his trusty GHS Boomers before EVERY show, and then, when he has Internet access, he tweets a photo of his guitar to let you all know how awesome and dedicated he is to the craft. Surely, for this little show and after the drive, he could skip this ritual, Christy and I assured him. Turns out we were both wrong. Don’t skip your rituals, or the guitar gods will be angry.

3 is the number of instrument cables I should have brought. 3 is the number of times Rambo, the simple-giant of a Slovenian who had a bike accident, freaked me out. 3 is how late we were walking around in beautiful Prague before 3 of us took a taxi home. 3 is the number of people in this van divided by 2.

The point is you can see something anywhere, anytime you focus so hard on it. This can also include focusing on having a good time. Even though last night for us wasn’t so spectacular, we had good time and got this amazing picture of three people at the hostel: John, Aesop, and the old Slovenian man who dozed off in the common area while watching pornography.

Doktor Ross Sewage
www.doktorsewage.com
dispatched from Die Struwwelpetra Ludicra 2011 European Tour

I was on a highway to hell. That is to say, on my “non-stop” flight to Germany, I ended up on three different planes. The first never left San Francisco, having electrical problems, so I was put up in a hotel not 20 minutes drive from my own home. I paid $30 for a taxi to a liquor store because the bar was closed. The next day, our flight did leave, and I had just enough time to finish a masochistic viewing of the Yogi Bear movie before we made an emergency landing in Chicago because the toilets wouldn’t flush. The third plane made it. I would assume “barely.” This is United, the biggest airline in the world. They’ve bought up a shit ton of all the old planes from all the defunct airlines and this bullshit keeps happening everytime on United, not to mention their stewardesses are less than. Viva consolidating corporate interests. Who needs market competition, anyway?

By contrast, I was able to book the rest of Ludicra on a Lufthansa flight. They got to the airport late, and the friendly Lufthansa staff, which Aesop assures me was all hot chicks or hot gay dudes, ran them through security so they could make their trouble free flight. A few Xanaxs later, and those bastards arrived looking well rested and cheey. I hate my friends.

Initially, I was to get a ride from Frankfurt to my final destination. In Germany, it’s common to schedule ride shares, as hitch hikers are not typically killed here. The website to check out, as my my fellow United victims from Germany told me was http://www.mitfahrgelegenheit.de/ Rescheduling last minute didn’t work out for me, because all the available ride shares filled up fast. Or maybe it’s better if you don’t tell the people you have a giant suitcase full of records and tee shirts and a stupidly huge bass guitar. Instead, because United got me here 24 hours late and I missed my ride, I had to pay 88€ for a train.

Both I and the rest of Ludicra had zero problems with customs. Unlike all the English speaking countries, one does not need paperwork in triplicate to enter most European countries. In fact, after the initial passport stamping, no one was even there to check our bags. Quite a difference from the retinal scan and thumb up the ass one receives in the States.

Pack your merch carefully, weigh your suit cases, organize who can check what bag and you can save a lot of dough on shipping merch to Europe.

Everyone arrived a day early to avoid any problems with late flights and to hopefully get rest before tour. We got a small apartment / hotel room, and this morning all our old bodies are well rested and ready to grab our walkers, hobble to the show, and show these kids how black metal is made. Gray hair metal.

Doktor Ross Sewage
www.doktorsewage.com
dispatched from Die Struwwelpetra Ludicra 2011 European Tour

April 1, and it’s no fooling, I’m starting the first day of my tour with Ludicra. This also the first day of my new blog. I have in the past done tour journals and blogs on MySpace, giving away my free content to NewsCorps. Not to mention, it got creepy with all these folks knowing the ins and outs of my brain, so I quit. Now, I’m doing it again with a focus in mind. The focus is music… Making it, recording it, touring, and a basic ethic of DIY how to do it. What better time to start than another tour? It’s the school of hard rocks. It’s a hard rock life. GET IT?!

I’m at the airport getting ready for a non stop flight to Frankfurt. Lesson one: non-stop flights rule. I’ll never forget running the Chicago airport and nearly breaking my knee falling, only to miss a flight and get our luggage lost with Wolves on the Throne Room on our way to Europe. So, always get non-stop, unless it’s more than a few hundred bucks.

Lesson two: it’s lonely. I’m alone. Since I’m a functioning alcoholic, time for a beer. It’s these little rewards that make it easier.

Lesson three: be gregarious. Technically, my bass case is “oversized” and should have cost me $250 to get on the plane. Instead, I got by being friendly, chatting, and basically acting like a dopey musician. It’s not a fat stretch, really, but being stressed and super business-like wouldn’t have helped. It’s a lesson I’ve learned by traveling with Dino Sommese, who infuriatingly gets away with the most heinous comments at an airport and gets free drinks, because he follows it all with a whimsical smile.

That’s it… Next up, customs.